Timeslip 1926
by Calapine
Summary: It's 1920's Chicago, and the Doctor, Rose and Jack have a mystery to solve.


**Timeslip 1926**

_"Who is the Doctor?"_

Hypodermic needle. Upper left arm.

"Who is the Doctor?"

Sting of pain. Fingertips. Electricity.

"Who is the Doctor?"

The current increased.

"Who is the Doctor?"

Jack bit down on his tongue and did not speak.

+

The sound of an unearthly arrival was drowned out by a car backfiring, convenient, but not suspicious. The door of the blue box swung open and three of them trooped out. They were expected, but not like this: the girl was dressed as a flapper, though her hair was far too long, the younger man was in a casual suit and the elder wore a leather jacket.

"All right!" said the young fella. "1926! Age of jazz!" He leaned closer to the girl and put a friendly arm around her. "Big parties, fast pace and loose morals. You're gonna love it!"

She didn't look impressed. "You've been here before then?" She sounded English.

"Only as often as I could be. C'mon, I'm gonna show you this great little place. Pretty boys, prettier girls and plenty of cheap booze. Doctor, you okay back there?" He glanced over his shoulder.

"Yeah." Another limey. He was examining something in his hand. Metal. Shining. "Look, you two go ahead, I'll catch you up."

"If there's something we can help you with…" the girl tailed off. So she did want to be here after all.

He looked up and smiled suddenly. "Nah, you two go have fun. This won't take long."

"What's the problem?" asked the fly-boy.

The Doctor hesitated. "Just before we landed the TARDIS picked up another temporal signature."

"Another time-ship?"

"No, too primitive. Looked like the signature of a temporal weapon." Fly-boy gave a low whistle.

"Here in Chicago?" asked the girl.

"Looks like it."

"Is that dangerous?"

The Doctor paused again, longer this time. "Could be. I want to check it out."

"Oh, come on, Doctor. It's probably been here for centuries. The Time Agency will get to it, sooner or later." The fly-boy, of course.

The Doctor fixed him with a severe look. "I don't have quite the same faith in this mysterious Time Agency of yours, and since this is my favourite planet, I reserve the right to be as concerned about it as I want. Now, like I said, this won't take long. You two go have fun."

+

The Doctor found them several hours later, in a little speakeasy that went by the name of the 5100, and with a flash of slightly psychic paper he was inside and looking for Jack and Rose.

The evening was in full swing, and there was barely an empty table inside. On stage, the chorus line was shuffling to one side, preparing for the entrance of a solo singer. The quick beat of the music slowed to something more intimate and the conversation lulled as a dark-haired beauty won the crowd's attention.

Jack was easy to spot. He sat near the stage, a dozen or so people around him, and a blonde on his lap. The Doctor frowned slightly, but the light was good enough for him to see it wasn't Rose. He let out his breath and approached the table.

Jack's voice was loud, he'd been drinking, perhaps a little too much. He was talking about England, and the Doctor rolled his eyes as he heard the word 'quaint' used far too often.

He picked up an empty glass and slammed it down on the little wooden table, causing everyone to jump and Jack to look up with an easy smile on his face.

"Doctor! You took your time. Pull up a chair, let me get you a drink." He waved at a passing waiter, but when he looked back to the Doctor he realised he was not being met with a particularly friendly expression.

"Where's Rose?" the Doctor asked.

Jack shifted slightly, smoothly sliding the blonde into the seat next to him, and glanced around. "She's about somewhere." He shrugged, before adding, "Having fun. Remember?"

"Some of us seem to be having too much fun."

"Come on, Doctor, loosen up."

"You loosen up anymore and you'll be vertical." The blonde giggled at that and stretched an elegant hand towards the Doctor.

"Eve Lawson, owner of this establishment," she said, and as he took her hand she used it to help pull herself to her feet. With a gentle arm, she steered the Doctor to the edge of the crowd. The Doctor cast a look over her shoulder.

"Jack looks disappointed," he said.

"Oh, I'm sure he'll find someone else to entertain him in a few minutes. Fascinating man, but he doesn't have your eyes." She smiled, a carefully practiced smile designed to put someone at ease. "Now who have you lost?"

+

This early in the afternoon, the inside of the 5011 looked drab and dreary, and it stank of last night's festivities. Rose was beginning to have second thoughts, but she had no idea where else she could go.

"Hello?" she called tentatively, unsure of whether anyone would be here at this time of day. Perhaps it would be better if she came back in the evening.

She spotted a door behind the bar, slightly ajar. Peering inside, she saw Eve - a much less glamorous Eve - bent over a stack of papers, scribbling furiously. She looked up with a start.

"We're closed," she said. "And I was under the impression that the door was bolted."

Rose looked down, guilt flickering across her face. "It was. I'm sorry." She stopped, swallowed. "I need a job."

"Oh." Eve sat up and leaned back, regarding Rose. "And how did you get in? If you don't mind me asking?"

"The kitchens," admitted Rose. "There's a loose window; I jimmied it open."

"Well, I'll have to see about getting that fixed." Eve turned back to her paperwork and wrote down another few figures before she spoke again. "What happened then? Your daddy leave you?

"He's not my…look, it doesn't matter. He's gone, right?"

"And those clothes, those the only ones you got?"

Rose looked down at her clothes: she hadn't had the opportunity to change her dress since she was last here and now it had a tear through it from when she had scrambled through the window. "Yes, this is it."

"All right." Eve leaned back in her chair, and peered through the darkened doorway that led through to the back of the speakeasy. She snapped her fingers a couple of times and there was the sound of running feet.

"Yes, ma'am?" asked the dark-haired girl who had appeared at the door, her face flushed.

"Helen, this is Rose Tyler. She's going to be working here for a while. Give her a room upstairs and find her some clothes." Eve glanced at Rose. "Can you dance?"

Rose thought about the last club she'd been too before the Doctor had whisked her off in the TARDIS and decided that was not what Eve was looking for. "I don't know," she said.

"Sing?"

Rose shook her head.

"Right, right. Helen…" Eve tailed off and waved her arm vaguely. "Just get her something to do."

+  
_  
"Alien." The current eased a little. "Was….on Earth."_

"That's better." The same voice, but it was softer now.

"Alien," said Jack again.

"Progress?" Different voice. Deeper.

"Slower than expected."

"It's taking too long. Enough of these primitive methods. Interrogate him properly." The scrape of a chair against metal, perhaps.

"Anachronisms? But, Mr Alphonso…surely, we can't risk…"

"This Doctor is the priority. For the moment any other considerations are irrelevant."

A pause. An exhalation. "As you wish."

The current ceased, and Jack felt rough hands lifting him up.

+

It was early evening and the 5100 was still quiet. Rose was glad to be clean again, and she wasn't having any trouble delivering drinks to the handful of customers that had already arrived, giving her plenty of time to think about her situation.

There was something off about the way Eve was acting, and Rose couldn't quite place what it was. At first, she had thought it was simply because the woman had given her a break, and Rose wasn't used to encountering the ordinary, nice sort of person in her travels, but there were other things too. She had been entirely unsurprised to see her again, and so quick to accept her. Like she was expected.

Rose felt a cold shiver go through her and turned to see Eve watching her from the doorway behind the bar. She waved Rose over.

"How's it going?" she asked, pulling the door shut behind them, blocking out the noise of the bar.

"Fine, thanks. I've worked behind a bar before."

"Just not one like this."

"No."

Eve nodded and smiled, leaning forward. "Tell me, Rose Tyler, do you want to get off this planet?"

Rose felt her eyes widen. "I…yes," she said, almost a whisper.

The smile turned into a grin. "So do I."

"Who are you?"

"A refugee. You've heard of the Time War, haven't you?"

"Course," said Rose with more confidence than she felt.

Eve pulled out a chair. "Now why don't you tell me about the Doctor?"

Rose nodded and took a seat as Eve pushed a drink towards her.

+

The Doctor had managed to detach himself from the very attentive hostess, having established that she had no idea where Rose was, and now he was firmly dragging Jack out of the speakeasy.

"Hang on," Jack muttered, half-stumbling, the Doctor's arm wound tightly round him.

"Your breath stinks," snapped the Doctor.

"I didn't ask you to get this close. Just give me a second to sobre up, would you?" He yanked his arm away from the Doctor and leaned against the nearest building, feeling the cold stone press against his back, head down, breathing slow. After a few seconds he straightened up and looked the Doctor in the eye. "Alright, now tell me where we're going."

"Back to the TARDIS," the Doctor told him, striding off.

"What about Rose?" asked Jack, easily matching the Doctor's pace.

"That's the point. She's gone. You went into that place, got distracted and then Rose disappears."

Jack shook his head. "She could have been anywhere in there."

"Well, she wasn't. You lost her. Well done. And I've got a nasty suspicion about what's happened to her."

Something clicked inside Jack's head. "That temporal weapon?"

"Top of the class," muttered the Doctor.

"Right. So what was it? Was it active?"

"Course it was _active._ I was able to track it. And it's not a weapon. I think."

"So what was it?" asked Jack again.

"I don't know; couldn't get close without drawing a lot of attention to myself," the Doctor told him as they approached the TARDIS.

Inside, his hands moved quickly over the console; too quickly for Jack to understand what he was doing. "I'm just gonna get some coffee," he said quietly, hoping to slip out of the console room without getting another sharp look from the Doctor.

"Milk, no sugar!" called the Doctor, and Jack winced slightly at the loud noise.

When he got back to the console room the Doctor had punched up a graph on the screen. Passing the Doctor his coffee, Jack peered over his shoulder and identified the temporal readings as showing the TARDIS and its occupants arriving on Earth.

"Looks alright to me," he said, taking a swig of his strong black coffee. It was bitter and burnt his tongue, but that didn't stop him gulping it back.

"That's just the first ten minutes. Less than an hour later." He punched a button. "Rose's reading's gone."

"Gone where?"

The Doctor changed the screen again. "About twelve hours into the future."

"So we can just materialise there, pick her up and we're away?"

"Not so fast." The Doctor took a sip of coffee. "Or don't they teach Time Agents about the Blinovitch limitation effect?"

Jack frowned, and hoped the caffeine would hurry up and start working. "We've already altered the future by observing it, right? So we're not going to be able to jump in there and change it again."

"Close enough. Best thing would just be to sit out the twelve hours and go find Rose when she turns up."

"And where is she going to turn up?"

"Ah." The Doctor paused. "Now that, I don't know. But someone must have activated the temporal gadget that sent her there. Someone at the speakeasy."

"You want me to go investigate?" asked Jack with a raised eyebrow.

The Doctor regarded him levelly. "You do realise that means asking questions and not getting people into bed, right?"

+  
_  
"Time Lord!" Jack screamed. "The Doctor, a Time Lord."_

"Impossible," snapped the familiar voice.

"He seems very sure."

"They are dead. All of them. Exterminated."

"Are you certain?"

+

Jack was back at the 5100. He had broken in through the kitchen window and tracked the co-ordinates of Rose's disappearance to within two metres, and was trying to find away of making the temporal scanner, hastily borrowed from the Doctor, tell him spatial co-ordinates.

"Looking for anything in particular?" It was Eve, watching him from the door behind the bar. He gave her his most charming grin, and she smiled back.

"Looks like I just found her."

"Breaking and entering, Mr Harkness." She tutted softly.

"Is it too early for a drink?" he asked, leaning on the bar. Eve reached behind the bar and pulled out a bottle of wine and two glasses. She poured one and pushed it towards Jack. He pick up the glass and paused.

"Don't you trust me?" asked Eve sweetly.

Jack smiled and took a sip, while Eve poured her own glass. "Very nice."

"That's very diplomatic. It's an atrocious vintage; I can't sell it to anyone, even at this gin mill." She downed her glass, and made a face. "So what can I do for you?"

"That friend of mine…"

"You still haven't found her?"

"No. But she was definitely here last night."

"There were a lot of people here last night."

Jack smiled. "Not many of them were zapped by a temporal weapon though."

Eve's expression froze. "Get out."

"Not until I've found out where…"

"No!" shouted Eve. "Now. Get out _now_."

An exceptionally tall and bulky man appeared in the doorway behind Eve. Jack flashed him a quick smile and made a hasty exit.

After a moment, Eve flicked open her bracelet and tuned in the frequency. "Alphonso, if you're there, I think you might be interested in a gentleman who's just left the 5100."

+

"So how do you feel about this life of crime, Rose?" asked Eve, looking up as Rose came down to the cellar of the 5100.

"Much less glamorous than I was led to believe," she replied.

"Well, I, for one, intend to partake in the glamorous aspect as soon as I make it off this rock." She put down the circuitry she was working on. "How's upstairs?"

"Fine. But there's a couple of guys that really want to see you."

"Ah."

"Ah?"

"You do know how prohibition works, don't you?" asked Eve, jumping up and taking the stairs two at a time, leaving Rose to follow her. "These are what you nineties people lovingly refer to as gangsters."

"Really?" said Rose, not quite able to hide her smile.

"Yes. Come on, let's negotiate and be threatened and then have a drink."

+

_And then it all went black._

Jack opened his eyes to see the Doctor staring down at him. "That was one hell of a party," he said, letting the Doctor help him sit up.

"Looks like it. What did they do to you?"

"Nothing very imaginative. Painful though. How you doing?"

The Doctor pulled a face. "Bored. Seems no-one wants to talk to me."

"They were very interested in talking about you though."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, didn't seem too keen to find out you were a Time Lord."

"Thanks."

"Hey, there's only so much pain a guy can take."

The Doctor looked away. "Yeah, alright. Sorry."

"Rose'll be fine, Doctor. Wherever she is. She can take of herself."

"I know that," he snapped, and then glanced at the door. "You know any way to get that open?"

"Good old-fashioned locks? Nothing short of a very, very sonic device. And they confiscated mine."

"Nothing to do but wait then." The Doctor aimed a half-hearted kick at the door. "That's the last time I try to rescue you."

+

"But they're _gangsters_," Rose exclaimed, her fingers digging into the leather seat of the limousine. It had looked like a nice way to travel, but apparently car suspension had a long way to go before the end of the century.

"That's right," agreed Eve. "And not very nice ones either."

"Can't we get it from somewhere else?"

"Rose, my dear girl, we are talking about a dematerialisation circuit. Arguably the single most complex component of any time machine. I cannot build one, and, unless you've been hiding a very deep reservoir of knowledge, neither can you. Without a properly constructed one, we can flit about in the same decade, at a push, but that's no way to travel, or get off Earth. Besides, this is the fun part. No more labs, or drunks, or making small talk. Thank goodness."

"So how did your friend get hold of this thing in the first place?"

"Ah, now that is interesting. He's a retired Time Agent, but this isn't a very popular time for them to spent the twilight years of their lives…or a very popular planet."

"Hey!" Rose said, and almost instantly regretted it. She had managed to push all thoughts of the Doctor and Jack to one side, reasoning that she could easily find them again if Eve finished her machine, but the casual insults towards her planet were so closely wrapped up with what she expected of the Doctor, it was hard not to imagine him speaking instead of Eve.

"Anyway, I though it would be a perfect place to lie low for a few years as I carefully, and skilfully, constructed a way to get back to the main space lanes of the era. And these Time Agents have a delicious habit of adding bits and pieces they've picked up over the years to their official pension." She leaned forward and spoke to the driver. "That's close enough, pull in here."

They jumped out of the car and Eve pulled her round the side of a non-descript building. She fished around inside her handbag and pulled out a gun. "You want one?"

Rose stared at the weapon for a moment. The Doctor wouldn't approve, but he wasn't here and people probably would be shooting at her. Just because she was carrying a gun didn't mean that she was going to use it.

"Alright," she said, swallowing as her fingers clasped round the cold metal.

"Right…let's see if I can get this right this time. Hang on." Eve whisked something else out of her handbag, a metal gadget Rose hadn't seen before.

And then they were inside. Somewhere dark.

"Alright, that's not quite right," muttered Eve. "Rose? You there?"

When she spoke, she didn't sound particularly happy. "Eve?"

"Yes?"

"You wouldn't be responsible for the fact that I ended up jumping into the future and losing the Doctor and Jack, would you?"

There was a pause.

"Eve?"

"It was an accident. Sorry. I thought you were Time Agents."

"Great."

"If it's any consolation, I've an inkling of where your friends are."

"What!"

"Stay right where you are! I can hear you scrambling about. And don't point that gun at me!"

"I would never…" Rose paused and took a deep breath. "Where are they?"

"I may have mentioned that there seemed to be some rogue time travellers leaving the 5100 to Alphonso."

"Isn't that they guy we're stealing from?"

"Yes."

"Where's the light switch?"

And then another, very familiar, voice said, "Right here."

The lights flickered on and Rose saw that she was in a cell, with the Doctor and Jack, both sitting on the top bunk and staring down at them.

"Rose!" exclaimed Jack. "Knew you'd turn up eventually." He jumped down and gave her a quick hug and then added, "He was getting all grouchy without you."

"Oh, bugger," said Eve and promptly disappeared.

"Hey!" called Rose, but then there was jingling sound at the door and a moment later it swung open.

"I've still got to get my circuit," said Eve, outside the cell.

"And I'd quite like my TARDIS key back," said the Doctor.

"And my sonic gun," added Jack.

"Which way?" asked Rose.

+

"Rose Tyler," snapped the Doctor. "Are you carrying a _gun?_"

"Yes." She looked at the Doctor. "Sorry." But she didn't let go of it. They'd already been shot at twice and although Rose hadn't shot back, she felt a lot safer knowing that she could.

"How much further?" asked Jack, bringing up the rear as the four of them raced up another flight of stairs.

"Penthouse suite," Eve said. "He's got that sort of over-inflated sense of importance."

"Alphonso." Jack rolled the word around his mouth. "Doesn't ring any bells."

"You were a Time Agent?"

"Yeah, was being the operative word."

They arrived at the top of the stairs and, throwing caution to the wind, Eve raced forward and shouldered into the door she had identified as leading to Alphonso's office. It held, and she rubbed her bruised shoulder as the others caught up with her.

Jack shot at the lock and the door opened with barely a creak. The office was empty, but Eve knew where the safe was.

She looked behind her. "Anyone any good at lock picking?"

Rose glanced at Jack, but he shook his head. Instead the Doctor stepped forward, and after a few moments, the safe swung open.

"A man of many talents," said Jack.

"You have no idea," the Doctor shot back, sweeping out the contents of the safe and picking up what he knew was his. He looked at Eve. "And what exactly were you after?"

"A dematerialisation circuit," she told him.

One appeared in his hand, and Eve raised her gun slightly. "I really don't want to start with threats."

"And are you going to use this for good or evil, Miss Lawson?" asked the Doctor, holding the circuit just out of her reach.

"I'm going to get off this very wet planet, Doctor. I'm not looking for universal domination, I'm just a refugee, from _your_ war."

The Doctor's face went blank, and he gave her the circuit without another word.

+

Jack found the Doctor pacing the Cloisters, a drab part of the TARDIS that he tried to avoid whenever he could. But the Doctor seemed to have taken up living there ever since they'd left Chicago.

He was sitting on one of the many benches littered about he place when Jack arrived, his head in his hands and staring at a piece of crumbling masonry being choked by ivy.

"I wanted to apologise."

The Doctor looked up, unsmiling. "For what?" he asked shortly.

"For giving in. For telling them about you. I'm sorry."

The Doctor scowled and stood up. Angry, but not at Jack. "It doesn't matter. I just…" He paused, and began to pace, his footsteps echoing round the stone chamber. "What do you know about Time Lords?"

Jack shrugged. "Not a lot. The Agency didn't have much info on them. We saw them as these mythical beings that protected the cosmos, liked to police the time streams and make sure no one messed about with them too much before…before the war."

"Yeah, that sounds about right." The Doctor smiled. It didn't reach his eyes. "Galactic ticket inspectors." He looked at Jack, his eyes unblinking, and Jack was afraid to look away. "We were never soldiers. We used…" he waved his hand vaguely. "We used to be able to fight. It was always for some noble principal, or against some great evil that would've chewed up the universe if no-one had stopped it. And back then, there wasn't anyone else. We were walking between the galaxies when other species were struggling to become self-aware." He slumped back against a column. "As soon as we thought someone else could take care of the problem, we backed off. Let them take care of it. We'd just look down from our great ivory towers."

"Until the Daleks," said Jack quietly.

"Yeah," breathed the Doctor. "I had the chance to kill them once. All of them. Right back at the beginning, before they had even had the chance to get off Skaro. Genocide."

"You didn't…?"

"Couldn't. Coward."

Jack swallowed. "That would have made you a monster."

He was startled by the bitter laugh that the Doctor gave. "Still did it though. Twice as bad. Had to kill my own people too."

"You were at war."

"And I had my orders, I suppose?"

"There couldn't have been any other choice."

The Doctor took three short steps towards Jack, until he was only inches away from him. "You think I shouldn't trust you, because you've got two missing years?" The Doctor's face was close, close enough for Jack to feel his breath against his cheek. "I've got centuries where everything's gone a bit fuzzy. I've got decades I've blotted out because I'm too afraid to remember. You shouldn't trust me, Jack." He paused. "Don't ever trust me."

"I do trust you, Doctor," said Jack, refusing to break eye contact.

"Then you're an idiot."

And then Jack kissed him. Because he didn't know what else to do. The Doctor's lips were warm, but it was the cold fingers holding his face that Jack remembered later. 


End file.
